Pope returns 62 Indigenous artefacts to Canada

ISTANBUL

Pope Leo XIV has returned 62 artefacts from the Vatican Museums’ collection, originally from Indigenous communities in Canada.

The pope presented the items on Saturday to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), which said it plans to return them to the Indigenous communities.

A joint statement from the Vatican and the CCCB said that the pontiff "desires that this gift represent a concrete sign of dialogue, respect and fraternity."

"The sixty-two artefacts, coming from different communities, are part of the patrimony received on the occasion of the Vatican Missionary Exhibition of 1925, encouraged by Pope Pius XI," the statement said.

Sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries between 1923 and 1925, the artefacts were later incorporated into the Lateran Ethnological Missionary Museum, which eventually became the Vatican Museums’ Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum.